Thursday, April 7, 2011

Quickly, I Swear...

I don't want to mope, I really don't...so I am going to do a super short post on this and then move back on to the positive things...

The Boy had his lottery yesterday for the kindergarten that I REALLY wanted him to get into...and I found out the results today.

They are offering 54 spots. We are number 174. 224 people applied.

Fuck.

So it appears he will be going to his neighborhood school for kindergarten (horrific scores and over 50% of the kids don't speak English), but we will see...PROVE ME WRONG, I tell you...prove me wrong. Make me LOVE you neighborhood school! Please...?!?! Because if that doesn't work...then I...well I have some really shitty decisions to make.

Damnit.

Okay, carry on with your evening. I will resume my "positive" self tomorrow. Tonight I am going to have some wine and be bummed.

2 comments:

>50% of the students not speaking English should not be regarded as a bad thing, at all. I entered 1st grade not speaking a word of English, and by the end of the year I was in the advanced reading group and had in excellent English fired my ESL teacher because I thought it was totally unnecessary. Throughout that time, we didn't speak any English at home, either -- it was all school interaction. Kids that age are just SPONGES for learning languages.

And if this means that the Boy is exposed to the other languages that his classmates are speaking, whether it's Spanish or Vietnamese or whatever, it will be an AWESOME thing for him to both get the importance of foreign languages and potentially also pick up some of that language... which is again, a super-awesome feature. People pay the big $$$ tuition to get their kid into bilingual school environments.

As for whether the school is terrible in other respects - it very well might be. I'm not going to lie, we moved where we did and bought a house here because the school system is good.

BUT I think the effects of a good vs bad school system are really much more pronounced in later years. High school, for example. AND I am also pretty confident that a smart, motivated kid like the Boy will take advantage of all the opportunities there are, and make opportunities for himself to learn things, since he seems very academically motivated. AND he has home support for that learning. Kids like that will learn no matter where they are.